Feature 21. Light verbs

found in question(s): 54

Definition and illustration

Light verbs are semantically bleached verbs that can cooccur with a multitude of nouns to form complex expressions that in other languages can be expressed with simplex verbs. An often-cited example is Persian, which has expressions, such as the following:

(1) Persian

(2) Persian

(3) Persian

In this case, kardan 'to do' is considered a light verb.

Correlations

Polinsky & Magyar (2020: 1) propose a correlation between OV order and the presence of light verbs:

"While the proportion of nouns in a lexicon is relatively stable, head-final/object-verb (OV)-type languages (e.g., Japanese or Hungarian) have a relatively small number of simplex verbs, whereas head-initial/verb-initial languages (e.g., Irish or Zapotec) have a considerably larger percentage of such verbs."

As a result of this noun to verb ratio, OV languages are claimed to exhibit more light verb constructions. Languages with VO order are, however, not consistent with respect to this classification:

"Those SVO languages that have strong head-initial characteristics (as shown by the order of constituents in a set of phrases and word order alternations) are characterized by a relatively large proportion of lexical verbs. SVO languages that have strong head-final traits (e.g., Mandarin Chinese) pattern with head-final languages, and a small subset of SVO languages are genuinely in the middle (e.g., English, Russian)."

The proposes correlation between the presence of light verbs and OV or, more generally, head-final patterns, is in need of thorough cross-linguistic testing.

References